I have been setting up my own basses for about 10 years now. I was initially underwhelmed with the jobs that the local guys (in Lawrence, KS) were doing so I decided to teach myself. I eventually did some apprenticing with some of the head repair guys at a local music shop. I was also fortunate to befriend a brilliant electronics engineer and repairman and he helped me learn some of the electronics side of things including amp repair. Now I do setups and repairs on guitars and basses part-time and it's a fun little side business. There aren't any repairman in the immediate vicinity so I get lots of work from local studios, students of mine, their friends and other local musicians.
I think it's invaluable if you're on the road at all. That was another thing that pushed me early on to learn how to do it on my own. What do you do if something happens right before a show (or during)? It was bad enough when it happened in a populous area but, as we all know, things have a way of happening at the most inopportune times, say when you're out in the boonies in Southern Missouri or something and are lucky to find a set of guitar strings on a Monday afternoon, let alone a repairman who would come by and fix your bass at 10pm. Forget it!
I use a Peterson VS-1 for checking intonation. It's been my best friend for several years now. I think the type of tuner is very important and often overlooked when attempting to adjust intonation. Not that it has to be a Peterson, just something very accurate. Most tuners are inadequate for proper intonation adjustment due to the limited size of their display and hence a limit of resolution coinciding with the amount of LED's per side. In most tuners I see today, the nearest LED's to '0' is ±10 cents which just doesn't cut it, IMO.
One of the things I've added to my repertoire, if you will, is checking frets other than the 12th for intonation. Since the bass can never really be perfectly in tune at every fret, you must find the best average. I have found that a lot of basses are a bit "out" at the 12th fret compared to the other frets. So assuming you have a chromatic tuner, go ahead and check the other notes on the neck. Why limit yourself to just one? The last bass I adjusted was a bugger. It was an Ernie Ball Stingray 5 and I found that pretty much all but the 12th fret were in tune. So if I had intonated just for the 12th, the whole bass would've been slightly sharp. But since I intonated relative to the 5th, 7th, 9th and 14th frets, it played more in tune over the entire fingerboard.
It's very easy during self-teaching to assume things are correct when in fact they are not. Taking a patient, multi-faceted, scientific approach has worked for me. I can't tell you how many instruments I've had to correct after someone has made what they thought were the right adjustments. But, it takes mistakes to learn and as long as you don't strip or break the truss rod, there's not much you can do to really hurt a bass just by making incorrect adjustments. I'll admit that there are some people who just aren't suited for this kind of work but if you're interested and experiment with care, you can learn a lot about your instrument and get it (and keep it) right where you want it. Good luck all!
I think it's invaluable if you're on the road at all. That was another thing that pushed me early on to learn how to do it on my own. What do you do if something happens right before a show (or during)? It was bad enough when it happened in a populous area but, as we all know, things have a way of happening at the most inopportune times, say when you're out in the boonies in Southern Missouri or something and are lucky to find a set of guitar strings on a Monday afternoon, let alone a repairman who would come by and fix your bass at 10pm. Forget it!
I use a Peterson VS-1 for checking intonation. It's been my best friend for several years now. I think the type of tuner is very important and often overlooked when attempting to adjust intonation. Not that it has to be a Peterson, just something very accurate. Most tuners are inadequate for proper intonation adjustment due to the limited size of their display and hence a limit of resolution coinciding with the amount of LED's per side. In most tuners I see today, the nearest LED's to '0' is ±10 cents which just doesn't cut it, IMO.
One of the things I've added to my repertoire, if you will, is checking frets other than the 12th for intonation. Since the bass can never really be perfectly in tune at every fret, you must find the best average. I have found that a lot of basses are a bit "out" at the 12th fret compared to the other frets. So assuming you have a chromatic tuner, go ahead and check the other notes on the neck. Why limit yourself to just one? The last bass I adjusted was a bugger. It was an Ernie Ball Stingray 5 and I found that pretty much all but the 12th fret were in tune. So if I had intonated just for the 12th, the whole bass would've been slightly sharp. But since I intonated relative to the 5th, 7th, 9th and 14th frets, it played more in tune over the entire fingerboard.
It's very easy during self-teaching to assume things are correct when in fact they are not. Taking a patient, multi-faceted, scientific approach has worked for me. I can't tell you how many instruments I've had to correct after someone has made what they thought were the right adjustments. But, it takes mistakes to learn and as long as you don't strip or break the truss rod, there's not much you can do to really hurt a bass just by making incorrect adjustments. I'll admit that there are some people who just aren't suited for this kind of work but if you're interested and experiment with care, you can learn a lot about your instrument and get it (and keep it) right where you want it. Good luck all!
